Conferencing and collaborating is of great importance in the dynamic environments of the modern world. Technology, in particular with the rapid changes, has significant impact on the way we communicate, and the values we attach to it.
Conference calls, connecting multiple participants in different locations into a common communication session have become very common. Conference call sessions may share audio or may combine video and audio in a communication session. As used herein, the term “conference call” may refer to an “audio communication session” or to a “video communication session” between two or more participants.
Conference call sessions may have poor sound quality, with participants experiencing echoes, feedback, background noise or other such interruptions. Sound quality may differ for different participants due to different phone companies, international callers, or quality of voice-over-IP (VoIP) lines. Furthermore, the participants in a call generally use different types of communicating devices, and speak at different distances from their microphones and at different volumes. Moreover, the participants may be in different environments, experiencing different levels of background noise.
Feedback issues may arise due to impedance mismatch in receivers, and echo issues may occur where communication terminals lack isolation between speaker and microphone. Thus, commonly one participant of a conference call may face difficulties in hearing and/or understanding another participant while the sound from other participants in the same session may be received without a problem.
It is noted that high quality conferencing-dedicated telephones or land line telephones may provide better call quality, while cellular phones may provide lower call quality. Thus, in one possible scenario, upon receiving low-quality sound from one participant, the receiving participant may operate the volume control of his/her communication device (telephone, TV screen, laptop, tablet and the like), to increase the volume level. This may provide better sound quality received from one participant, but at the same time, the volume increase may negatively affect the audio signals received from the other participant, if for example, the volume is too high or reaches an inconvenient volume level. Commonly, this may occur as the typical receiving device is not selective and the increase of volume level applies to all sources of audio played by the communication device.
It is further noted that a communication device associated with a participant may not be properly adjusted prior to entering a conference call session. For example, the setting of the device microphone may be incorrectly adjusted or the speakerphone volume may be turned up too high.
Another possible scenario may occur when a participant is located in a noisy environment with background noise such as barking dogs, crying babies, clattering dishes or the like. Typically, the disturbing participant may be asked to mute his device or may be forced to do so if the system supports such functionality. Yet, it is highly desirable to have a functionality of selectively reducing the volume level of an interrupting communication device, or selectively muting a specific participant.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,674,842 describes a multi-line telephone device that may be used for conference calls and provides the user with the ability to selectively control (or mute) the volume level of each of the other participants in a conference call session. This is achieved by providing the user of such a phone with a complex user interface containing many controls and options which one needs to manipulate in order to achieve the desired result. Additionally, the solution of U.S. Pat. No. 6,674,842 requires extra circuitry for separately processing audio transmission of different participants (either in the phone itself or in the phone network).